US Public School is Not Bad—It’s A SCAM!
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about how the U.S. public school system has become an MLM scam that teaches kids almost nothing and is dedicated to milking as much money from parents as possible. We also talk about why more money in schools does not make them better.
Transcript
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Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I'm being driven crazy
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by our son. The only thing he talks about with regard to his school experiences are
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fundraisers and donations. She says this, and I am absolutely serious. I have never,
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and I ask my kid every day, what'd you do to school today? What'd you learn in school today?
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I'll get some vague notion, like numbers, or like maybe there was a book. If it was a fundraising
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event, they remember every effing detail. I'm sorry, he does not talk about books that they read
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or any educational activity. Maybe he talks about like playing around with some friends,
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but no, this week alone, Malcolm, this week alone, we've been repeatedly hammered about three things.
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One, picture day retakes. Two, donating candy for decorating gingerbread houses because they
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canceled the one field trip of the year. And instead of making gingerbread houses that day,
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but God forbid they provide the supplies for gingerbread houses. And then three, participating
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in the readathon fundraiser for the school. Three school fundraiser activities. One week,
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one randomly sampled week of the school year. And this is becoming, oh, I don't think that,
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and I think what you're going to go into, this isn't just our school district. The school system
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in the United States has become basically an MLM scam. It teaches kids almost nothing and is
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completely dedicated to milking as much money from parents as possible. And yes, and this comes at a
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time when it is more clear than ever that U.S. public schools are failing. You know, this isn't just
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an issue of them being turned into MLMs. They're also utterly and completely failing on X. I log on
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to X this morning, of course, after an evening of my son hounding me for money, right, from the school
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because he's been indoctrinated not to learn to read, but to raise money for them. And then I see
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trending on X that a University of California, San Diego report shows placements into remedial math
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courses have jumped from 32 students in 2020 to 921 in 2025, or 11.8% of freshmen. 10% of freshmen
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are in remedial math, despite high school GPAs averaging 3.74 in May, claiming calculus experience.
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Placement tests revealed gaps in basics like fractions and word problems.
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Is this, wait, this is policemen, you said? No, this is students at UC San Diego.
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Oh, wow. The University of California at San Diego. A good, like a decent school. My mom went there.
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Not, I mean, you know, she wasn't, she, I think she was smart. I, I consider her to be smart. But anyway,
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the average GPA of a student going into UC San Diego is 3.74. 3.74.
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3.74. Yeah, 3.74. That's a decent GPA out of 4.0. That's a decent GPA. I didn't have a 3.74.
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Yeah. So, I mean, people are pointing to COVID learning losses and test-free admission since
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2021 and more students from under-resourced schools. But let's, let's, let's be clear here.
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I think an underrated thing that no one is really talking about is this MLM thing. So we're going to
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go into it. I want to talk about this today. We're going to talk about other underlying factors,
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money in schools, but I think the MLM thing is- More money does not make schools better. I want
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to make this clear. Are you going to go into- We're going to go into that, Malcolm. We're going to go
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into that. But I, we're going to start with the very colorful world of MLMs because if you're not in
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the US, I think it's, it's going to be really surprising to you. And if you are in the US,
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even if you are in our generation, millennials, like we're, we're in our, in our mid to late thirties,
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you're going to find that, oh my God, even in my childhood, my school was an MLM because I realized
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this myself. So basically there are many ways in which schools are acting like MLMs. One of the big
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ones that I think is the most egregious is that schools are being used to shill private companies'
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products. And this is in the, in the form of fundraisers, which I don't know if you experienced,
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Malcolm, because I don't think you ever went to public school. I did go to public school. I went
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to a lot of public school. Okay. So you went to public school and then you were sent into like
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the prison camps and systems. So like- No, no. I went to public school, then private school,
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then prison camp. Were you ever in, for your public school or even for private school,
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like sent out to sell wrapping paper or chocolates? Yeah, I was. Yeah. And we'd also do
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fundraisers with families. We'd also do fundraisers for little toys. We do. Yeah. So there's a,
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the, this is a very common practice in, in us public schools. I did it too. I sold wrapping paper
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and I sold C's candies to raise money for my school. I cannot remember what it was possibly for,
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but there's a really great planet money episode. This is a podcast affiliated with the NPR.
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Right. It's like other companies that run them. Yeah. It's other companies. So the episode that
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the planet money did investigating these was called the secret world behind school fundraisers and
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turning kids into salespeople, which it addresses the open secret that school fundraisers are a
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staple of American education, which I think people just don't really think about. It talks about how
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students are often incentivized to sell products like popcorn or chocolate or wrapping paper with the
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promise of prizes, sometimes extravagant prizes, but usually way less valuable than the effort
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required. And the episode follows Villanova Elementary School in it's in California. It's
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just a normal, totally middle of the road, California elementary school. They show how fundraising
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is needed for things not covered by the official budget, like especially field trips, which kind of
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makes our son's field trip being canceled very indicative of this. What was the field trip supposed
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to be too? And why was it canceled? Some kind of Dutch theater. It seems cute and wholesome and
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adorable, but yeah, they're not doing that anymore. So it doesn't matter. And the PTA, apparently the
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Parent Teachers Association plays a really pivotal role in deciding to do these because they want like
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cool things for their kids. And they're just not seeing it happen. So they're turning to these
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private companies as a fundraiser, which is really kind of lame because they're only getting really
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small cuts of this. So while schools receive substantial funding per student, mostly spend on
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salaries and basic operations, principals have limited discretionary funds. So budget rules often
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restrict spending. And this is why PTA raised money plays such a valuable function in this. Here's what's
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not mentioned in the episode because Planet Money, being NPR affiliated, being a generally progressive
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podcast does not, I guess, want to anger teachers unions, but teachers unions are really the ones
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that are tying school districts money on how money can be spent. And in basically insisting the money
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needs to be spent on teachers pensions and teachers unions and all these things that really restrict
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school's ability to buy basic school supplies or, you know, send the kids on field trips or do any of
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the fun things that a school should have discretionary spending to do. Now the, the, the fundraising
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companies, they, they compete for PTA business. So they will actively market to parent-teacher
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associations and entice members with things like dinners and super easy logistics. So they'll like
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take a mom out and be like, Oh, like this will, this will make so much money. And the kids will have
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so much fun. But the typical split is about 40% to the school, 60% to the company. So you're,
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you're really wasting people's time with this. Like people should really just be donating money
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and the value to, yeah, the value returned to schools is really not great at all. And of course
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the kids are mostly selling to family and friends. They're not going to door to door, but I used to
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go door to door. I don't know if you did. I remember we were encouraged to by the organizations.
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I always thought it seemed like an enormous waste of time. Because it is because the, again,
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like the school is only getting, and this is in, in like a nicer situation around 40%.
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And the reason, the reasoning why, and what they're trying, like at least what these companies
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are telling to parent-teacher associations and parents is, Oh, well, like people don't want to
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donate to a fundraiser, but people will find it more fun to sell, you know, like wrapping paper
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and popcorn. Cause everyone likes popcorn. Who doesn't want to buy popcorn?
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Does the NPR piece go over? There's a 40, 60 split.
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Yeah. Yeah. They're open about that. The one thing that I criticize them for is not really
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talking about the role that teachers unions take in like taking all the money that isn't
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associated with student outcomes or student benefits, that it's all just going to teacher
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union. It's absolutely not that they're not getting enough money. American schools get more
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money per student than I think almost anywhere on earth.
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So if you combine secondary, tertiary, and primary education, we're the second highest spending
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It is that they are not spending it well. They are wasting it on the union.
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Yeah. It's being wasted on really stupid stuff. So the, but the, the, like sort of the,
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where the planet money team leaves it is like, Oh, well this system persists because people prefer
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to give when there's excitement and visible reward and community involvement, like in the,
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in the episode itself, which I'll link to in my show notes, which is available for our paid
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Patreon and sub stack subscribers. Thank you so much. You guys it's, they, they talk about
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like, they, they, I think they include like some, some audio from an assembly where they're like,
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yeah, like let's go, you know, like they make it's, it's a total MLM thing. It's like those stupid MLM,
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like motivational speeches. It's insane that they're doing this in schools, wasting students time for
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this, but guess what you think? Oh, so this is like, okay. That it's just pretty bad that this happens
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in school. But I mean, like, this is something that PGA puts together. Like maybe it happens for
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a portion of the year. I remember we did it twice a year in my middle school. That is not the only
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fundraiser that's happening at your school. Like I said, our son has come home to us for, with three
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asks so far this week. Okay. Hold on, hold on. It's not just that now. Now they're doing stuff
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like for our kids, they'll give them computers to take home on days when like schools cancel for the
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days. Didn't even include that. You're supposed to like learn on this home computer, except the
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apps, which are games for the kids to play on require a subscription to pay. And of course,
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you know, the parents, the kids are just going to ask the parents, sign me up for this.
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Yeah. I, I, yeah, I didn't even include that. So that's another one. Here's some other examples
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is, is, is walkathons and readathons. So I had this, this fight with our son Octavian last night
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about a readathon that his school is doing the way that these work is with a walkathon or a readathon.
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Basically walkathon and readathons are, they've been held at us public schools since like the 1970s.
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And they got really popular starting in the 1980s. And, and they're meant to sort of like encourage
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healthy activity or like encourage kids to read like, so drive literacy, drive physical fitness
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by getting kids to pledge to walk a certain distance. And then you, you have your friends
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and neighbors and families say, well, I'll give you this many dollars per mile walked or per book
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read. And then those dollars are, are funds that you donate to the school. So this, this, in this case,
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at least it's directly donated to the school, but it's still the school trying to raise funds for
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discretionary spending again, because they're not there. Their money is tied up by teachers unions,
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basically, and other rules. By the way, the way I want to handle the walkathons and stuff like that
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with our kid, just so he doesn't have to go and walk for no money is just on the days of the walkathon
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and as we won't send them to school. Well, but here's the problem with the readathon. And here's
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the funny thing is like, oh, this encourages physical fitness. This encourages reading activity.
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Okay. So Octavian last night is like, well, mom, you have to, you have to give me money for the
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readathon. And I'm like, okay, fine. Like read a book. And he's like, well, fine. And he like goes
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and grabs a book, you know, one of the, one of the books that we read to them that they really
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like the X for geniuses books. And he chooses the optical physics one or optical, whatever.
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And, and he, he, he starts signing up pages and stuff, but he starts getting really frustrated.
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And because, you know, he's still like in that standing out stuff and the phonics stuff. And it's
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just, you know, he didn't feel like doing it. He didn't want to read the book. And he's like,
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it's a readathon. You don't have to read books for it. And I'm like, Octavian, the whole point
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is you have to read books. But he's like, no, it's about getting prizes. It's very clear to me
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that the way that this is being sold to the kids in school is not, oh, reading is great. Let's read
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more books. We love reading, you know, like show how much. It's not about prizes, mom. It's not about
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reading. No, literally, literally. I, I, I didn't have my phone right next to me. So I couldn't film him
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yelling at me about this, but he was getting so mad. He was like, no, you know how like you get really
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confident when you're like mad at me and you think that I'm wrong. He's like, you're obviously
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wrong. He was doing that to me. All right, buddy. Tell me about this readathon. This readathon,
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like my teacher said, you don't have to read for readathon. Okay. So what do you do for readathon?
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We just don't have to like read and we can do all this stuff. What's, well, what is this stuff?
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It's a game board. It's a game board? Yeah, that we have to fill up. If we fill up all of it and save
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$200, then we're sure we're getting a 12 feet, a star one. If we save them for $2,000. Oh, okay.
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Yeah, we need to get the most donations. And why do you want the most donations? Because we get,
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because if we don't get that many donations, then somebody else is going to be in first place.
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And how do you fill out the game map? We need to do all the stuff it says.
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We're just like, no, mom, obviously, it's not about reading. It's about the prison.
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And I was just getting so mad. And I'm like, yeah, clearly, this is not the,
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the, the, ooh, we're just promoting literacy. Same with walk-a-thon. So my school,
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Storytime, I don't think you knew about this, did a walk-a-thon.
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So they, they had us do it on the naval base. It's, it's in Alameda, the abandoned naval base.
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So guess what happens? One of the kids steps on a bees nest, but it turns out to be a really large
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one. And it turns out to be killer bees. We were in the news. It was great. I remember walking,
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you know, and it's in the heat, you know, it was, it was, it was close to summer by that point,
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or it was like right after summer break. I can't remember which, but it was hot. We're like walking on
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this old airstrip on a naval base in the Bay area. You know, this is like, you know,
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it's like walking in circles in prison camp. You know, this is not like a fun activity. It's,
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it's like making children trudge to raise money. And then suddenly there are ambulances,
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people are running and I'm just kind of confused. And yeah, just, everyone's just like, like panicking
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and trying to run away from a very large swarm of bees. Fortunately, nobody died, but we, yeah,
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we, we did make the news. So that was very, everyone was very excited about the news. That was great.
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This is what says American public schools at their finest.
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Yeah. I don't know if this is when they started calling them Africanized bees. I don't remember
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when that whole thing happens. That sounds racist. That was, yeah, it was really hilarious.
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And then I don't know if you, you realize Africanized, I feel like it's the new
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To be like, it's to remind you that they're humans.
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Yeah. So the, yeah, the other thing that, that Octavian and it, you know, honestly, he just,
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they must repeat this to the kids so much at school because he sounded like a recording.
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He was like, and also tomorrow is school photo retake day, where if you don't like the photo
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that you got of me, then you can have another one taken tomorrow. And remember how he, he took home.
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So school photos get taken in American schools. This, this stems from a tradition that was totally
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normal where like in back in the day, back when photos were first invented, you know, groups of
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students would go out to the front of the school in pose and have their photos taken to like, remember,
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you know, and, and, and typically it was like, Joe, you know, Phillip's dad who had his
00:17:48.000
his special camera would, you know, take a picture and then, you know, make copies for people. Maybe
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people would pitch in to pay for the paper or whatever. Right. But like, you know, and then,
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and then of course, you know, got to the point where some local photographers started, you know,
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well, Hey, I'll come to the school. I'll take everyone's photo professionally. And then some
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larger companies were like, Hey, like, I'll, I'll be like, I'll, I'll come and I'll bring a
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backdrop, you know, I'll, I'll be more professional about it. And we'll do a class photo. And then they
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started doing individual photos of the students because, you know, people didn't have cameras
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back then. Right. So they're like, well, then I'll, you know, I will take a photo of you and then,
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you know, every year you can buy a photo of your kid that was professionally done. And now
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I'll convince the school to let me go in and do it by sharing some of my profit with them. Okay.
00:18:32.880
So I don't know if you knew this, but schools are sharing in the profit of school photos at this
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point. And it's still today. Of course, it's certainly major private equity companies that
00:18:42.160
are doing well. Yeah. Yeah. So actually life touch is the company that took my photos as a kid. Did
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they take your photos as a kid? I don't know. For me, it was always life touch. And for our son,
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it's life touch at his public school. They've even made it now into daycares. I don't know if you
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remember, but at kinder care, when our children were in daycare, life touch also descended upon
00:19:04.960
their facility and defended upon the, yes, yes. Well, they did. And life touch is, is just a giant,
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you know, faceless company that, that interrupts the school day. And now it is sort of like the,
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the one big company there's, there is no other school photo company. The bigger thing has been
00:19:25.200
providing school photos since 1936, when it was founded as national school studios in Minnesota.
00:19:32.560
And, and yeah, I mean, the company's basically been in continuous operation for nearly 90 years,
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but then it started to acquire and just roll up all of the, the, the small, like little companies.
00:19:46.640
And the way that it works now is it negotiates a contract with every single school district
00:19:52.400
and their earnings range from as little as 15% to as high as 50%. Like some school districts have
00:20:00.080
gotten wise to this and they've like literally made rules where like, we will accept nothing less
00:20:04.320
than 50%, but some school districts are total rubes and they just like allow themselves to be totally
00:20:09.360
fleeced over and make me like 15%. And what's what I, as an outsider, start a company that takes
00:20:18.880
school pictures and then go to the school districts and be like, and offer more 75%.
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Because they have these like binding contracts. I think, you know, they're just like so used to it,
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but they're just, they're so bad. So let me, let me share with you just because you might think,
00:20:33.440
oh, well, these are professional photos, right? Like, you know, it's nice to have your kid
00:20:36.960
professionally photographed. Let me show you the professional photos of our, our children
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that are just so great. Really, really fantastic. Oh my God. He looks, I'm not even going to put
00:20:51.200
these on screen. They look so bad. You need to put them in. My favorite is this one that they got
00:20:56.320
of Torsten. He, he just looks absolutely like a prisoner that, you know, like hold up the newspaper.
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I also found one of you, Malcolm, here you go. That's just, yeah. Amazing photo. Just,
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they really nailed it. Nailed it with the purple background. That's just great. And here's, here's,
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here's all Simone life touch. Just absolutely fantastic. So yeah.
00:21:29.840
You can tell they're our kids. I'll tell you that. I, I'm just, I'm just trying to argue,
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like there's absolutely no justification for, for shoving these upon parents, showing them to kids,
00:21:42.320
interrupting the school school day, but it doesn't end there. There's also the scholastic book fairs,
00:21:47.120
scholastic book fairs. Oh my God, the book fairs are such a scam at the kids. No, but hold on,
00:21:52.160
Simone, before you go further with all this, something I need to emphasize to the listener here is our
00:21:57.200
kids. Remember nothing, nothing from school. This is all you hear about. Literally nothing
00:22:06.240
in school that I am aware of. I am not aware of any reading. We, all the reading he does,
00:22:10.000
he learned from us, right? The little bit of time we spend on it with him. With that being the case,
00:22:15.600
he can remember the book fair stuff like verbatim. He can remember five pitches in like one day that he
00:22:24.960
got over the course of that day. It is as if they are teaching the children literally nothing with
00:22:32.160
the MLM pitches anymore. I mean, sales is always be closing, right? I mean, like to a certain extent.
00:22:38.720
Okay. I guess like it's kind of the book fair thing. This actually, for me specifically what it,
00:22:44.800
what it has done is I just saw it. Maybe it's his personality. He's too young. Maybe he just can't
00:22:51.840
remember whatever he's doing in school. And now what I'm realizing is they are doing nothing of
00:22:58.160
value. And so I now have this, this perspective, Simone, where you can tell me if you, if you want
00:23:03.680
to push back on this, but I'm really thinking maybe at the end of this year, we just pull him out and I
00:23:08.160
don't know if we should send the other kids. And the reason I'm saying this is because it is actually
00:23:13.360
a lot of our time to send him to school. And if instead of waiting on the school bus every morning,
00:23:18.880
I just spent 30 minutes teaching him to read more education than going to the school.
00:23:24.080
I mean, I'm, no, I'm being very serious, Simone. Like, no, I know, I know you're being serious.
00:23:29.920
And then other than that, we put on documentaries or something, right? Like I can't until he gets
00:23:34.240
proficient enough at reasoning to use Parasia.io, which is our alternate school system. Anyone who
00:23:38.000
has kids of school age, there's actually already kids who are doing their education on Parasia,
00:23:41.360
which is really cool. Yeah. Um, which I like that we're able to offer that to people.
00:23:47.520
Listen, the only reason Octavian is in school is because he asked to. I don't know if he's going
00:23:52.320
to ask to. Not anymore. He asked to originally. Does he still ask to? He's asking to go.
00:23:58.000
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He asked to again this year. So I, but I also feel like he might be getting on
00:24:03.840
the edge of it at this point. Simone, I think the problem with how you're asking him is you are
00:24:08.400
asking him at the end of a period where he hasn't been to school in a long time and he's excited.
00:24:11.840
You ask him. You should ask him while he's in school. Yeah. Ask him tonight. Ask him tonight.
00:24:18.400
Great. So anyway, Scholastic Book Fairs, they've been held in public schools in the United States
00:24:23.440
since 1989, in 1981, when Scholastic purchased the California Book Fairs, which was a company
00:24:30.320
and began organizing in-school book fairs nationwide. So California School Book Fairs was a company that made
00:24:36.320
money by selling books directly to students and families at school-hosted events. Schools that
00:24:41.120
host Scholastic Book Fairs generally receive, you want to guess how much they get in profit?
00:24:47.200
25%? Yeah, actually you nailed it. Either, either 25% of the total sales as cash profit or 50% as
00:24:58.560
Scholastic dollars, which is a form of store credit usable for educational materials you purchase from
00:25:05.760
Scholastic. That are already overcharging. Yeah. Because they're, they're immensely overpriced by
00:25:11.280
the way. Yeah. So, so yeah, it's, it's, it is, MLM. I don't know what else to say. Now keep in mind,
00:25:17.600
the 25% cut only comes with the highest tier of compensation. You have to say, sell over $2,500 in
00:25:27.360
books in your school to get that cut. Otherwise you're getting a lower percentage. And I just want to be
00:25:33.520
clear that, well, okay, profit to schools nationwide totals approximately $2 million annually.
00:25:41.680
Scholastic makes a lot more because considering that's of the 25% at best that schools are getting.
00:25:48.440
Yeah. And I bet they're also counting schoolistic dollars in this, which totally don't count.
00:25:53.220
Yeah. Totally don't count. So Scholastic Corporation, while actually I think it's Shutterstock
00:25:58.560
owns LifeTouch now, they, they bought them. So we don't know how much a margin that they're making
00:26:03.520
that the school photos company, Scholastic Corporation is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ
00:26:09.120
under the ticker SCHL and its gross profit margins have been very strong with the latest 12 months
00:26:16.820
figure being around 55.8%. Growth. So these guys are making a lot of money. Wait, wait, 55.8% growth.
00:26:26.300
Gross profit margins. Oh, gross profit. They're profit margins. Yeah. Yeah. So to just like,
00:26:34.200
this is, this is absolutely ridiculous. This is again, for, for discretion. Shut it down.
00:26:39.020
Shut it down. I call shenanigans. Shenanigans. What's all this? Officer Parbrady, I would like
00:26:45.100
to reinstate my previous shenanigans. This whole carnival is a rip up. You know, uh, excuse me,
00:26:49.440
but I agree. These rides are really stupid. Okay. Let's calm down. People of South Park,
00:26:54.260
do you declare shenanigans on the carnival people? Yeah. Okay. Carnival people, do you
00:26:59.400
accept this decree of shenanigans? What are you talking about? This whole town is screwy.
00:27:05.440
Well, that settles it. Everybody grab a broom. It's shenanigans.
00:27:08.940
Schools need more money, but schools need more money. And so people might be like, okay, well,
00:27:19.420
yeah, you know, well, then we just need to give schools more money. Then they won't be so desperate
00:27:23.000
to raise money. More spending does not produce better outcomes first and foremost. And this is
00:27:28.060
summarized really well by an essay that just came out from Emile Kierkegaard. I mean, at least as of
00:27:32.960
recording, I, it came in my inbox this morning and inspired this whole episode actually titled
00:27:38.040
against the economists on school spending in which he highlights how large randomized controlled trials
00:27:45.160
on educational interventions almost always show no or negligible benefits. So he he's trying to,
00:27:52.400
in this essay, critique common claims that economists and educational policy circles make
00:27:58.160
that increasing school spending significantly improve student outcomes and particularly test
00:28:04.200
scores. He references major studies like the Coleman report showing that parental background
00:28:09.920
and socioeconomic status matter much more than school variables for student achievement and that
00:28:15.740
school related factors contribute only about 10% of outcomes, which I mean, when you consider how
00:28:20.900
much money actually goes to these things is ridiculous. He highlights meta-analyses and prominent
00:28:25.560
studies frequently cited by economists, noting that the effect sizes for increased spending on test
00:28:30.460
scores are extremely small, typically 0.030 standard deviations per 1000 per people or even less.
00:28:41.040
And the results are often muddled by bias p-hacking and publication bias in the literature.
00:28:46.040
He's super, super skeptical of complex economist studies employing complicated statistical techniques
00:28:52.920
to claim causal effects. He prefers large, simple randomized control studies because obviously there's this
00:28:59.080
huge bias in academia to support spending on academia.
00:29:02.200
Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll ask the teachers how much money they need.
00:29:05.560
Yeah. Yeah. And he also points to examples such as massive funding boosts for Abbott districts in New
00:29:11.000
Jersey, Mark Zuckerberg's donation to Newark schools, and LeBron James' high-profile Akron school
00:29:17.060
all failed to improve achievement gaps in test scores. And I can also share with you some of the graphs.
00:29:24.840
So he shared, you can include them in the episode that shows some of the data here. Hold on.
00:29:31.500
I'm trying to drag them into what's happening. My mouse is not responding to my dead finger.
00:29:36.340
All right. So here's one and here's the other. So what we're looking at here is simulated district
00:29:47.800
level expenditures versus test scores when $1,000 increases student scores. What we're looking at
00:29:54.160
is a graph that's showing absolutely no effects of money and test outcomes. And this is something
00:30:01.720
Oh, my God. It's like literally no effect. It's literally no effect.
00:30:04.740
No effect. Oh, my God. And then there's another one that
00:30:07.420
that Kierkegaard put together, 10th grade math test scores per people expenditure for institutional
00:30:13.020
salaries. What about this one? It shows it go down some at the end here.
00:30:17.560
Yeah. Like really high levels. It actually knocks the scores down.
00:30:24.840
I bet you know they're inner city schools or something, though.
00:30:26.940
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to argue that teachers-
00:30:30.060
No, actually, they're not inner city schools. I can tell you exactly why they're going down.
00:30:32.600
You can tell from the graph. Can you tell? Actually, I want to play a little experiment,
00:30:36.160
Simone. Can you tell why the blue graph has the numbers go down at the higher level of
00:30:41.140
spending? Because the sample's smaller? No. Okay. So if you notice, it appears in striated bands.
00:30:49.780
Yeah, it does. Yeah. In bands. Yeah. And the heaviest band is where the number goes down a lot.
00:30:55.160
That heavy band is likely a student union, a teacher's union. And that teacher's union is
00:31:01.220
collectively getting a specific price per student as a way that they work and knocking the score
00:31:08.620
its way down. Well, and this is actually the perfect segue because I am now to my key argument
00:31:15.740
here, which is that teachers- Wait, are you going to go to the Mississippi school district or should
00:31:18.920
I do that? The what specific school district? Mississippi.
00:31:22.800
Oh, no. I'm not going to. No, because that's a whole podcast.
00:31:25.940
Come on. Well, I should briefly go over it. So recently, the Mississippi school district,
00:31:29.840
one of the lowest funded school districts in the United States- Mississippi is a whole state.
00:31:33.840
The state, whatever. The state is getting the highest test scores on reading levels,
00:31:38.740
specifically if you adjust for the ethnic groups in the state, which is to say that typically black
00:31:44.580
kids get lower reading scores than white kids. I'm not saying that this is due to genetic reasons
00:31:47.860
or anything. It's just this is a truism across the United States. And Mississippi has an unusually
00:31:51.440
large black population. And when you account for that, they have by far, I think, the best reading
00:31:56.060
levels in the United States, despite having very low spending. And it's just because they entered a new
00:31:59.560
program. And even in an absolute sense, I think they're like the third best reading in the United
00:32:04.180
States now, which is wild because they used to be a joke of an education system. And how did they do
00:32:09.640
it? They did not do it with a ton of extra spending. There was minor extra spending, but the major thing
00:32:14.360
that they did, but the extra spending was spent on specific programs, not an increase in teacher
00:32:18.860
salaries anywhere. And it was not letting kids graduate until they agreed until they actually met the
00:32:24.920
requirements to graduate that grade. Yeah. And yeah, anyway, though, back to back to the
00:32:31.700
scholarship troopers world where all the scores are posted on a board, which is what we need to do.
00:32:36.380
Yeah. So it's teachers unions in the U S that are just dragging schools down to hell. And this is
00:32:54.520
well illustrated by Tony Sinek in an article that he wrote in city journal a while back about the
00:32:59.920
California teachers association that provides a really good case study of this. It's called the
00:33:04.620
worst union in America. So in this article, Sinek argues that the California teachers association
00:33:10.100
is the single most powerful and problematic union in California and is central to the decline of
00:33:17.060
California's public education quality as it blocks education reform provides underperforming and
00:33:22.880
sometimes criminal educators and lobbies to inflate teacher salaries and benefits, creating fiscal
00:33:29.140
burdens for the state. I mean, and everyone knows California state spending is insane. I mean,
00:33:33.680
they're the ones that are about to try to tax billionaires, just like handle a little expense
00:33:38.600
for them. Daddy, literally they're like, daddy, I need an extra allowance. It's like you're a 36
00:33:45.740
year old. Well, I overspent a bit this month, daddy. And then they make so much money. It's a state that
00:33:51.660
I mean, it's like, it's bigger than what Japan's economy, so many nations economies. Anyway, we're running
00:33:56.720
out of time. So I got to keep going. The CTA's power surged after the RADA act in 1975, which allowed
00:34:02.720
collective bargaining for teachers. And then ever since then, it has used its growing membership
00:34:07.460
and financial resources, which are about 186 million in annual income, much of which you spend
00:34:13.620
on politics, to oppose reforms and control local school boards. I mean, this is such a powerful
00:34:19.500
organization. Notable CTA campaigns include blocking school choice initiatives and fighting measures like
00:34:25.740
class size reduction, which lead to costly results without educational improvements, and resisting efforts
00:34:31.740
to make teacher dismissal easier. Teacher dismissal, firing, firing bad teachers.
00:34:38.200
I had, for example, like, and this is, I went to a California school, so I was subject to this
00:34:42.560
teacher's union. I remember this one biology teacher I had in high school who literally on the first day
00:34:48.600
of school was like, I am just waiting to get my pension. I am phoning it in. Do not bother me.
00:34:54.800
Go like, do your textbook, do your homework. I don't care. This was also a teacher when we had a
00:34:59.940
school shooter scare one day. I was in his class when it happened. He just hit the deck. No, no,
00:35:06.120
like attempt to tell us what to do or like protect us. He was just gone. He just bamfed. It was great.
00:35:12.680
Like, I do not care about children. I have made that known to my boss.
00:35:16.040
No, he really, no. Yeah. He was just like, I don't care. I am checked out. Do not bother me.
00:35:20.440
Like, because, and could he be fired? No, he couldn't be fired. Firing bad teachers in California
00:35:25.860
is extremely difficult due to union-backed rules. So teacher misconduct ranging from incompetence
00:35:31.200
to literal criminality rarely leads to termination. The article details incidents where union used
00:35:37.860
aggressive tactics to oppose vouchers, which is our key thing, and accountability measures and reforms,
00:35:45.140
including intimidation, costly ad campaigns, and political influence. So I'll quote from the article
00:35:51.200
here. In 1991, the CTA took to the ramparts again to combat Proposition 174, a ballot initiative that
00:35:58.560
would have made California a national leader in school choice by giving families universal access
00:36:04.120
to school vouchers. When initiative supporters began circulating the petitions necessary to get it
00:36:09.700
into the ballot, some CTA members tried to intimidate petition signers physically. The union also
00:36:16.420
encouraged people to sign the petition multiple times in order to throw the process into chaos. Just so you
00:36:22.720
know, the way that, like, things work with elections and stuff in the United States and with ballots, like,
00:36:28.260
they're very, very weird rules that will, like, disqualify a signature. Like, for example, we live in a
00:36:34.800
village, but if we, if we put our village name instead of our township name on a petition signature,
00:36:42.020
it disqualifies our entire signature, and it can invalidate, like, things like nominations for, for
00:36:47.700
legislation like this. So basically, they were misleading people in their directions to try to
00:36:52.540
throw off the entire petition campaign. So just really, really annoying. Let's see. Quote,
00:36:58.440
there are some proposals so evil that they should never go before the voters, explained D.A.
00:37:03.640
Weber, the CTA's president. So evil. School vouchers. They should never go before the voter. The voters
00:37:09.880
shouldn't have a choice. Yeah. One of the consultants who organized the petitions testified in a court
00:37:14.760
declaration at the time that people with union ties had offered him $400,000 to refrain from distributing
00:37:24.160
them. Another claim that the CTA member had tried to run him off the road after a debate on school
00:37:30.920
choice. All right? Like, the mob has nothing on these people. No, it's absolutely true. And they're
00:37:36.860
destroying children's lives. And one in, one, one in the recent CDC studies, one in 10 kids attempt to
00:37:42.860
unalive themselves on any given year in an American school system. One in 10 kids is graduating
00:37:47.200
S-Aid. You know, like, it's, it's bad. Yeah. So the CTA also funds various progressive causes,
00:37:53.800
totally unrelated to education. Oh, great. Oh, great.
00:37:56.040
Their political reach and discouraged dissent. So I'm also quitting from the article again.
00:38:00.680
Among these causes, implementing a single payer healthcare system in California,
00:38:05.040
blocking photo identification requirements for voters, and limiting restraints to the
00:38:09.660
governor's power of eminent domain. The CTA was the single biggest financial opponent to another
00:38:14.480
proposition, eight, the controversial 2008 proposal to ban gay marriage, ponying up 1.3 million to fight
00:38:21.780
the initiative. They'd eventually won 52.2% of the vote. The union has also become the biggest donor to
00:38:27.280
the California Democratic Party. From 2003 to 2012, the CTA spent nearly 102 million on political
00:38:33.120
contributions. 0.08 of that money went to Republicans. And setting points to the case of
00:38:39.200
Locke High School, which illustrates how union resistance can stifle reform. And it is, it is really
00:38:45.700
insane. So I also just want to read this real quick. Consider the case of Locke High School,
00:38:49.820
in the poverty-stricken Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Founded in response to the area's 1967
00:38:55.660
riots, Locke was intended to provide a quality education to the neighborhood's almost universally
00:39:00.440
minority students. For years, it failed. In 2006, with a student body that was 65% Hispanic and 35%
00:39:07.760
African American, the school sent just 5% of its graduates to four-year colleges, and the dropout rate
00:39:13.580
was nearly 51%. Shortly before Locke reached this nadir, the school hired a reform-minded
00:39:19.480
principal, Frank Wells, who was determined to revive the school's fortunes. Just a few days
00:39:24.100
after he arrived, a school of rival gangs got into the dust-up. Wells expelled 80% of the students
00:39:30.660
involved. In the new atmosphere of discipline, Locke dropped from the first number of campus crimes
00:39:36.720
reports in the LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District to 13th. So basically, this became a much
00:39:42.960
less crime-ridden campus. Test scores and college acceptance also began to rise. But trouble arose
00:39:49.460
with the union when Wells began requiring Locke teachers to present weekly lesson plans. The local
00:39:56.100
CTA affiliate, United Teachers Los Angeles, filed a grievance against him and was soon urging his
00:40:02.000
removal. The last straw was Wells' effort to convert Locke into an independent charter school,
00:40:08.260
where teachers would operate under severely restricted union contracts. In May 2007, the
00:40:14.500
district removed Wells from his job. He was escorted from his office by three police officers and an
00:40:20.440
associate superintendent of schools, all on the basis of union allegations that he had let teachers use
00:40:26.340
classroom time to sign a petition to turn Locke into a charter. Wells called the allegations a total
00:40:32.540
fabrication and the signature gatherers backed him up. The LAUSD reassigned him to a district office
00:40:38.940
where he was paid $600 a day to sit in a cubicle and do nothing. So they didn't even freaking fire him.
00:40:46.500
They did what every, you know, now like, because you can't fire people, right? Because this is the
00:40:50.700
school district. So let's just waste money, but like make him entirely feckless. So this is, it's just,
00:40:56.600
it's in short, the, the union backed policies jeopardize the fiscal security of California
00:41:02.000
schools. This is why schools don't have money. Okay. This is why they have turned themselves into
00:41:07.340
MLMs because literally corrupt unions are taking all the money for it. It's like, it's like if the
00:41:13.840
mafia ran your school system, I was just taking all the money for itself. Stronger stance against
00:41:19.200
teachers unions more broadly. Yeah. I think they don't realize how existentially dangerous they are to
00:41:24.040
our goals. Like our son's school is being run by the mafia and they're just taking all the money for
00:41:27.900
themselves. Meanwhile, his, his teachers are desperate to like do fun things for them, like
00:41:31.580
make fricking gingerbread houses. And they're begging us to give them packets of gingerbread
00:41:36.240
cookies, which we need to go by by the way, because I, I plunged gingerbread cookies or crackers anyway.
00:41:42.160
So basically the solution to this problem, because I got to go run and pick up our kids from school now,
00:41:46.620
the bus is about to drop them off is, is school choice. The only way to fight this is to allow
00:41:51.340
parents to take their tax dollars elsewhere, to private school, to charter schools, to home school,
00:41:56.000
and to give people an example of how much of a difference this makes, like how much this can
00:42:01.420
really signal to schools that like, Oh, I'm screwed. If I don't actually cater to the best interest of
00:42:07.420
students and keep the tax dollars with me, the public school. So how much does the average person,
00:42:12.800
the average American household pay annually in school district taxes to support public schools?
00:42:17.540
So in many states school funding relies heavily on local property taxes, even though keep in mind,
00:42:23.740
schools also receive state and federal funding. But this can represent up to 21% of the local
00:42:30.360
education budget is property taxes. In New Jersey, the average annual school tax per household is around
00:42:35.880
$6,200. In California, local property taxes funded about 21% of the education budget, but average
00:42:43.740
amounts per household could range from $1,000 to $10,000. Like the amount that you pay just on private
00:42:50.920
school in a year. Yeah. And in public school spending per student on average in the United States
00:42:55.960
is around $15,600 nationwide. Now imagine if that was portable. If a family was like, listen,
00:43:03.540
my public school isn't delivering. I'm going to take my $15,000 and I'm going to put it toward
00:43:08.940
homeschool. Like imagine if we could do that and put it toward homeschool to have the time to buy
00:43:14.040
that time and in the materials and stuff so that we could do this for our kids at home or that we
00:43:17.800
could send them to, you know, we can have a homeschooling pod or we can have a private school
00:43:23.040
or send them to a charter. You get five kids together, six kids together. That's $50,000 a year.
00:43:27.960
That's a teacher's salary, right? Like, yeah, exactly. You could hire a tutor, like a full-time
00:43:34.120
aristocratic style tutor, you know, like a really good one for your kids and they would
00:43:39.420
thrive. They would thrive. And, but more importantly, like, I don't want public schools
00:43:43.900
to disappear. I think public school teachers are amazing. They do really good work when the incentives
00:43:48.280
aren't poorly aligned. The problem is that there is no accountability. And if you allow for school
00:43:54.820
choice, you create that accountability. Suddenly schools have to compete for students because they'll
00:44:00.180
go away if they don't do a good job. And this aligns them around student outcomes instead of
00:44:05.200
teachers unions. So anyway, that's the solution. But until then, schools are an MLM. You're welcome
00:44:12.160
for my analysis. That makes sense. I love you. I'm convinced we're taking him out this winter.
00:44:19.420
It's bad. No, no, seriously. I think we should. I think that the straw that broke the camel's back
00:44:24.720
for me was seeing that he could, and they could teach him when it was to scam him or scam us.
00:44:30.180
They just couldn't teach him any information. And when I saw that, I was like, oh, F you guys.
00:44:36.340
Like, F you guys. It's bad. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, I, there's so many great people in the district.
00:44:43.240
We've met so many amazing families through his school. I feel so frustrated by it. But yeah,
00:44:48.840
anyway, I just didn't realize until doing this actual research how much of even my experience with
00:44:54.560
the public school system was related to these MLM programs, the, the, the, the walkathons and,
00:45:00.680
and the selling the wrapping paper and the selling the chocolates. And I'm like, wait a second. Like,
00:45:06.320
especially when you consider how much the average, because other school systems do not get this much
00:45:11.700
money. Anyway, got to run and get the kids. I love you very much, Malcolm.
00:45:15.040
Fascinating, right? Sense. I swear that like Indian deity with all the hands, all the hands.
00:45:25.500
And the advantage now of being a mom, it makes so much sense now. I get it. I get it. Okay. Sorry,
00:45:34.020
mister. Oh, his eyes are so wide. Oh, hungry eyes. Hungry eyes. All right. Okay. I'm so excited for
00:45:45.560
this one. How's it going? Good, man. Good. It's 56 degrees in our house. I can finally think straight.
00:45:55.480
You know, this is how I want it to be. What am I having for dinner tonight? I figured because we
00:46:03.400
still have a little more bok choy that we're going to do more of the, the, the beef. Do we have
00:46:08.740
thawed beef? Yeah. Okay. Great. I've been slowly dosing it out because I, I just put one of the,
00:46:16.000
one of the two large bags that I created in our handier freezer. So we live such an abundant life.
00:46:24.380
We have two freezers. This is crazy. The recipe you did yesterday was fantastic. It was bok choy
00:46:29.700
with a fantastically tender fried, pan fried beef. And what are the bean sprouts with some seared
00:46:37.220
peppers? Oh, you know what? Actually, I don't have any thawed out beef. Do you just want,
00:46:42.840
Oh, what if I made you just the, the stir fried vegetables, but then like tamago rolls?
00:46:50.620
I think it'd be better with a fried egg or two fried eggs. Oh, just like a fried egg on top.
00:46:54.800
Oh, that sounds fun. Okay. Let's just do that. What are you learning about? Are you seeing my
00:46:58.620
amazing meal here that mommy made me? You ever had a meal like that?
00:47:07.140
Are you guys all having too much coughing because of the pepper?
00:47:09.520
Oh, this is what the family suffers for my flavor.
00:47:22.100
Let's just, just save the beef. Cause I mean, that's, it was expensive.
00:47:26.920
The beef was trivially expensive compared to how many meals it's making.
00:47:37.780
I've literally eaten it almost every day for the past two weeks, Simone.
00:47:41.700
I know, I know. And you're not even, you're not even halfway through it.
00:47:48.760
Considering how much people spend on just like DoorDash for one night, nevermind.
00:47:54.620
But for our budget, these, these are lean times, Malcolm.
00:48:02.180
I will assume my outline scrolling and feeding position.
00:48:15.820
You just put the bottle in the armpit trick works.